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You can use this technique when a difficult emotion has arisen and is knocking you around, or you can choose to bring up an emotion you want to work with that has been problematic in the past.

By recognizing our difficulties and engaging them in a positive healthy manner, we begin to naturally make healthier choices. We Do have to make the effort!

When contemplating an emotion, sit with the experience only as long as you are able to.

Do not let it become overwhelming.

If it is too much – let it go, return to peaceful abiding meditation.

Some emotions we may need to work with a little bit at a time.

Exercise

Sit in shamatha (peaceful abiding) meditation for a few minutes.

Bring to mind a thought or emotion that is troubling you.

Bring to mind a person or situation that causes your discomfort.

Let the emotion increase, feel the physical sensation of the emotion in your body.

Now let go of the thought of the person or situation that causes your discomfort,

and focus only on what energy, what physical feeling has arisen.

Notice where the feeling is located in your body.

Let what you are feeling be your experience.

Now turn into – look at, from an outside, non-judgmental state, that emotional energy,

Look directly at the energy of that feeling, with an absence of any attachment or engagement; just see it from a place of vast, clear awareness.

Now include the energy of that emotion into the vast, expansive, clarity of your awareness. Permit the emotion expand into that vast calmness, and gently dissolve, like mist in the morning sun.

Gently rest in your clear awareness.

Short – 3 Breath – version of calming.

1-Breathe– Breathe in deeply:I Am Present.

2-Breathe – Breathe in deeply: I Am Calm.

3-Breathe – Breathe in deeply: I am Open.

Let your open presence remain, smile, and continue with life.

The “Short version” is to merely calm ourselves, to bring our focus back to the present moment, which can be used anytime. Notice when you are feeling agitated, and remember the 3-breath technique. Notice if your ego, does not want to calm down, it would prefer to stay agitated. You can include this resistance in the calming breaths. Choice is Always an option.

“Contemplation of an Emotion” is going further into investigating, and working directly with an emotion, and seeing, one, that we do have a choice of how we relate to our emotions and, two, that the emotion is not who we are, it is a transitory experience, and we can choose to return to a fuller, more open awareness of life.